Network providers currently face the challenge of maintaining the integrity of numerous communication flows across an access network, even where the network conditions are less than ideal. To meet this challenge, the network providers must determine locations of the nodes (e.g. switches, network elements, etc.) in the network that are causing the access network to behave in a sub-optimal fashion and remedy the situation, for example, by rerouting or dropping packets.
Locating the problem nodes often involves obtaining and analyzing network traffic information associated with the nodes of a network. Currently, however, this information is often obtained from a single network device, such as a router, that is located at the interface of a core network (e.g. the Internet) and the access network, and typically involves flow information associated with a single communication layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. For example, in some legacy access networks, a router obtains and analyzes Internet Protocol information (Layer 3 information) before reporting the status of packet flows to the network provider. Such methods for flow analysis, however, are limited in the amount of information relied upon for the traffic reports and overall flow management. Thus, methods and apparatuses for improved network flow analysis are needed.